• Thursday 16^th February 2017, 6.30pm
• Tessa Blackstone Lecture Theatre [11_0003]

 

 

‘What it is, with all the kinds, causes, symptoms, prognostics, and several cures of it. In three partitions; with their several sections, members, subsections, philosophically, medicinally, historically, opened and cut up…’ – Robert Burton, ‘The Anatomy of Melancholy’

This lecture explores the Post Truth world where everything that was once stable appears suddenly uncertain. A powerful interplay between the forces of nature and technology against those of culture and economics. Facts and Alt facts grotesquely distort picturesque futures. The New Wunderkammer – an encyclopedic inventory of complex interconnected taxonomies. Presented here with meticulous footnotes, exhibit cards, carefully catalogued listings and Latin citations of provenance – guided by the reassuringly confident tone of the absent narrator. A delirious journey confronting complex strands of interwoven narrative and inexplicable facts; finally balanced on the edge of reason and bathed in doubt. From the Historical Arcane and Natural Curiosa in the private collections of 16^th and 17^th Century Europe, to vitrines of state, and the ever-present digital cloud.

Simon Herron & Susanne Isa were both trained at the Architectural Association London. They currently teach design studios at the University of Greenwich, where Simon is Academic Leader Architecture, and Susanne is Year 1 Design Coordinator. They were Previously postgraduate design tutors to MArch Unit 16 at the Bartlett and DS 14 University of Westminster, and have also run international studios at Sci-Arc Los Angeles and Lund Sweden. Both have lectured and exhibited internationally. Built works include Machi no kao: three pavilions for Toyama Prefecture, Japan [Herron Associates @ Imagination 1991-94] and a collaboration with AHMM & Studio Myerscough to produce the Millennium products touring exhibition for the British Council, and display units for the Millennium Dome Learning Zone [1998]. Their current research interest reflects on Architecture in the age of the Anthropocene, with a particular focus on photography and architectural drawing. With Mark Morris [Architectural Association] they are documenting and curating the Ron Herron Archive. This project has been supported by a research and development grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

 

 

 

 

 

• Thursday 26^th January 2017, 6.30pm
• Tessa Blackstone Lecture Theatre [11_0003]

The distinction between avant-garde and mainstream is constitutive of architecture’s evolution. Only by differentiating the avant-garde as a specific subsystem can contemporary architecture actively participate in the evolution of society. The distinction between avant-garde and mainstream is non-evaluative. Both sides of the distinction are necessary. The architectural avant-garde functions as the R&D segment of our discipline. The destiny and redemption of avant-garde production is mainstream proliferation. Avant-garde becomes mainstream.

Patrik Schumacher is a practicing architect, educator and architectural theorist^. He is the principal of the Zaha Hadid Architects, where he has completed projects such as the Vitra Fire Station (1992) and the Stirling Award winning MAXXI centre of Contemporary Art in Rome (2010). Patrik was the founder of the Design Research Lab at the Architectural Association (AADRL). He has taught at a number of schools internationally, including Harvard and Columbia in the US, and the University of Applied Arts Vienna and Innsbruck University in Austria. He has written extensively on parametricism, a phrase he coined, which he argues is poised to become the global epochal style for architecture, urbanism and design of the 21st century. His books include The Autopoiesis of Architecture, Vol.1: A New Framework for Architecture and The Autopoiesis of Architecture, Vol.2: A New Agenda for Architecture.

Christophe Girot & Charles Jencks discuss The Course of Landscape – Moderated by Tim Richardson

[The Course of Landscape – Thames & Hudson Book Launch]

• Thursday 24th November 2016, 6.30pm
• Tessa Blackstone Lecture Theatre [11_0003]

Christophe Girot is director of Atelier Girot. Since 2001, he also is Chair and Professor of Landscape Architecture at the ETH Zurich. Through the projects of his design office, and his role in the ETH, he is a recognized expert in state of the art technologies for field applications in large scale landscape designs. Prizewinner of many competitions and prizes of excellence, he completed the Master Plan for the Central Campus in Zurich, the Parco di Castello in Florence and is currently designing a large topographic project for the Swiss tunnel engineering firm AlpTransit in Ticino. He is an effective partner in project acceptance by political and public authorities. His projects have been extensively published and exhibited, amongst others at the Groundswell exhibition at the MoMA, Harvard, and in Essen Germany. His new book, The Course of Landscape is out now.

Charles Jencks has held simultaneous jobs over his seventy-plus years: architectural critic and historian, cultural theorist, designer of cosmic landscapes, co-founder of the Maggie Cancer Care Centres and what he is best known for – becoming the protagonist and definer of Post-Modernism. After getting degrees at Harvard, in English literature and architecture, he moved to the UK in 1965 where he has lived ever since. In 1970 Jencks received a PhD in architectural history, studying under the radical modernist Reyner Banham. His many works include; Modern Movements in Architecture (1973), The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (1977), Towards a Symbolic Architecture (1985), The New Moderns (1990), The Architecture of the Jumping Universe (1995) and The Story of Post-Modernism: Five Decades of the Ironic, Iconic and Critical in Architecture (2011).